[sri ramanuja] What a Difference a Devotee Friend Makes in our Lives:

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What a Difference a Devotee Friend Makes in our Lives: Aug 2004

 

I've been taking the same route to work for ten years years, since I moved

to Chicago. I usually ride the same bus in the morning at the same stop. For

at least the last few years, the same group of people board at the same

time, and we've become acquainted and talk with one another.

 

One senior woman, who I see and greet every day, is much older than I, and

has always been very shy, and quiet. She is always the last one to board

and the last to leave it, always sits by herself, and seems extremely

withdrawn.

 

About a month ago all of that changed. One morning she pushed ahead to be

the first one on the train, displaying a sense of urgency and energy I'd

never seen before. She hurried down the aisle and sat down beside another

woman and began an animated conversation with her.

 

Every morning now that woman is the first one on the train and seems alive

and alert and completely changed from the person I'd observed for the past

years. She no longer sits alone; she no longer waits behind everyone else to

enter and exit; and she is no longer silent-she has found a friend.

 

I know that some devotees work and interact in relative isolation,

responding to requests and demands of work or student life, but with no one

they can really count as a friend, a devotee friend.

 

One of the wonderful things about our Vedics and Ramanuja groups association

is that it is more than a spiritual association; it is for many people a

place where they have made friends-lifelong friends-people with whom they

are at ease and who give them energy and vitality and who care about them.

Fostering friendships among devotees is a vital, if unstated, benefit of

Vedics Foundation.

 

I cherish the write ups and associations from the Ramanuja list, though I

might not be very active in replying to the e-mails on this list. I wanted

to say thank you my devotee friends, for being in my life.

 

Adiyen Ramanuja Dasan